Why study Digital Humanities

The digital humanities explore enduring questions about human culture by using digital tools creatively and critically to gather, mine, organize, visualize and disseminate information. Digital humanists work across all areas in the arts and humanities. Projects can include mining of large-scale historical census data, exploring work on computational linguistics and computer-assisted language learning, or mapping patterns of sound and image in contemporary music videos or theatrical performances.

Over the past fifteen years, “digital humanities” has gained international currency as an umbrella term for the innovative ways in which scholars have developed digitally-enabled initiatives to investigate and address enduring questions about human culture. While scholars now routinely employ computer technologies in their work, digital humanists not only employ digital tools but also attempt to advance their use critically and creatively on campus and beyond.

In modern times, humanistic learning and technology have often been cast as separate domains. But in our new digital world, these divisions no longer hold. One of the fundamental premises of digital humanities is that culture and technology are interactive and interdependent. By using and developing digital tools and applying them to information, we can enhance our knowledge and understanding of human culture and technology.

The field of digital humanities can be a confusing one. We sat down with Professor Constance Crompton, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Digital Humanities at the Faculty of Arts, and asked her to help us out.

Three experts from Library and Archives Canada will discuss some of their latest initiatives. These include an innovative digilab, a new Wikipedian in Residence program and the launch of a crowdsourcing tool.